


Sinking Man

by beyourlionheart



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, That's Not How The Force Works, finn and rey aren't really there but are discussed, force connected poe and rey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:14:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28143702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beyourlionheart/pseuds/beyourlionheart
Summary: When Poe Dameron first blinks his sand-covered eyes open, the first thing that he decides is that Jakku is nothing like Yavin.Short fic about when Poe wakes up alone on Jakku following the TIE crash!
Relationships: Poe Dameron/Rey
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	Sinking Man

**Author's Note:**

> Hi hello! This is my first attempt at a fanfic work since I was 15, so, uh, please be nice?
> 
> Summary: Poe wakes up alone on Jakku and attempts to figure out a way off the planet. Sort of.

When Poe Dameron first blinks his sand-covered eyes open, the first thing that he decides is that Jakku is nothing like Yavin.

He knows this, of course— he’d only just left the planet a day ago, after all. Or was that days ago? He can’t pinpoint it anymore. In fact, he realizes that there’s not a lot he can pinpoint. Other than the fact that he’s lying on his back in the sand, letting the sun bake his skin like a lizard on a rock.

How long has he been there? It’s just another question he can’t answer. He’ll add it to the list.

Jakku is a desert. A sand-covered graveyard for what the rest of the galaxy has forgotten about. It’s about as far as one can possibly get away from his home, where the trees reach the skyline and there’s enough green for him to close his eyes and imagine that that’s the only colour in the world. 

That’s home for him; the colour green. As he scans the rolling hills ahead of him, his eyes can’t seem to find a single green thing, and he’s sure he can see for miles.

Slowly, he lets his feet slide along the sand, until his knees are bent, and he’s forcing his way through the pain of his sore muscles. His hands follow shortly after, and he bends his elbows so that his hands can rest on his chest. All that movement’s taken a lot out of him, he realizes, and for a moment, he just lays like that, nearly letting his eyes flutter closed again.

As soon as he does, though, a thought strikes him: he’s on Jakku for a reason.

A droid.

_His_ droid. BB-8. _Orange and white, one of a kind_.

And _Finn_.

Oh, lord, Finn. The stormtrooper who he’d only just given a name; who’d only just learned what it meant to make his own choices. Even in that tiny TIE-fighter, he’d felt something, like he’d been meant to find Finn all along. That all that pain and all those mistakes had been worth it, if just for a moment, he’d given that freedom to someone else. The freedom that had been stolen from him far too soon.

Could Finn have survived the crash? He likely wouldn’t have had the foresight to eject from the TIE soon enough. It’s a foresight that Poe had learned the hard way. He’s seen too many people go down with the crash in his thirty-some years.

If Finn has survived, though, then he’s going to need a hand getting off this godforsaken planet, and they still need to find BB-8. Poe will need to find BB-8 either way, or this whole mess will have been for naught.

And so, Poe remembers his mission. 

His elbows push up the top half of his body, and from there, it’s just a matter of convincing his limbs that, no, they are not fully cooked, and yes, they can move in this stupid sand. 

He wishes, absently, that he hadn’t taken off his jacket at some point, since the sun seems to be merciless across the sandy dunes. As he stumbles forward, it beats down on him incessantly, reminding him that his body isn’t built for that kind of heat. Even if he curses the Yavin humidity each time he visits Kes, he knows he’d take it each and every time over this unbearable nonsense.

There seems to be nothing for miles. No sign of the crash, Finn, his droid, or any of the towns that he knows exist somewhere on this planet. Without any stars to guide him, or any sense of where exactly he’s crashed, all this walking is rather pointless. Where is he going? Where is he right now?

His legs seem to agree with his sudden bout of hopelessness, and he finds himself sinking down in the sand, his hands bracing his fall. His head hangs down so that his hair hangs off his head, and more of his neck is exposed to the sun. Even with his natural predisposition to tanning, he knows he’s going to have to deal with the inevitable sunburns when he gets back.

_If_ he gets back.

With a heavy sigh, Poe sits back, and his hands clench some imaginary water canister, reminding his throat just how dry it is. He tries, and immediately fails, to swallow, and for a moment, he worries that he’ll never know what water tastes like again. 

This is the end for him, surely. 

Poe Dameron, the Resistance’s best pilot, son of Shara Bey and Kes Dameron, is going to die in the sands of Jakku. 

From _heatstroke_. 

He lets out a mirthless chuckle.

Just when he’s about to lie back and let the sun take him, his hand reaches instinctively to the chain around his neck, where his mother’s necklace lies flat against his chest. It’s deceptively cool on his fingers, and he grasps it in his fist, wishing that feeling would spread across his body.

_ “Tal'ama parqual!” _

Poe opens his eyes with a jolt, sitting up in the sand. 

On the hill opposite him, he can see the outline of a person, standing like a beacon amidst the plain orange landscape. He sits up a little more, trying to get a view of what’s happening, though he doesn’t know what language she’s speaking.

_ “Parqual zatana!” _

He watches closer, finally able to tell that the figure, dressed in off-white, is a woman. There’s little he can make out from her features, be that because of the glare from the sun, the distances, or the fact that his eyes feel like they’re going to bug out of his head. Even from there, though, he can tell that she’s beautiful. The profile of her face; the way she moves graceful across the sand, like it was made specifically for her. It’s something out of a fairytale, he’s sure. 

She’s not the only thing there, though. He watches as she fights with a creature of some sort, over a thing that’s squirming in a bag. A thing. _His_ thing. 

_ BB-8. _

Poe scrambles to his feet, realizing that he needs to intervene. Or, rather, that he should have intervened much sooner anyway. He’ll chalk that up to the heatstroke and crash.

As he stumbles forward, his legs barely carrying him, the image starts to blur and fade. He blinks, once, twice, and then he’s only looking at the heatwaves rising from the sand. 

Where did she go?

He opens his mouth to call something out, but only a pathetic noise ever leaves his too-dry throat. Whoever the beautiful stranger was, she’s gone, and so is his droid. With them, the last hope he’d been able to muster in order to keep moving across the sand. 

Poe sinks back down, feeling his chest heave without permission. Out of nowhere, his lips form around a word: _Rey_. That was Rey.

He can’t place how or why he knows that, but something in him knows. He just does. 

“Rey.” He repeats the word aloud until he’s thoroughly digested it. The single syllable dances across his mind; something he’s sure he’s not soon to forget.

The name remains a trumpet call in his mind, so loud that he almost doesn’t notice the familiar _woosh_ of air over his back, sending sand down his collar and every other crevice it can find.

Poe glances up to see an X-Wing settling down on the same hill he’d just seen Rey and BB-8, and the cabin opens to reveal a familiar face. 

Snap drops down onto the sand, sprinting awkwardly toward him. Soon enough, there are hands helping Poe back to his feet, and he’s leaning on Snap for support. 

“Gods, Poe, what happened?”

“Long story, Snap,” Poe replies, flinging his head around to catch a glimpse of the girl— Rey— over the hill. “Did you see them? Rey and BB-8? Or Finn? I crashed with him.”

“Rey? Finn? Poe, who are these people? There’s no one here for miles. It was lucky I even found you.”

“But I—” He runs a hand over his face, blinking away the glare of the sun from his exhausted eyes. “I thought I saw…”

Snap sighs, giving him a sympathetic glance over his shoulder. “Poe, I don’t know what you saw, but there’s no one else here. It could’ve been a mirage, though. I mean, you look like you’ve been through hell and back.”

A mirage? Could that be all it was? His brain trying to compensate for the hours he’d spent in the sun, making images from the reflection in the sand below his feet. Rey had never been there. Rey probably wasn’t even real. 

Poe lets out another laugh, and he grins at Snap, though the lines never quite reach his eyes. “Come on, Snap. I’m as pretty as the day we met, aren’t I? Just need some water and a good night’s sleep.”

“And a kriffing ton of bacta. Let’s get you back to base.”

“What about BB-8? I didn’t finish my mission.”

“It’s gonna have to wait, Poe. We’ll have people look into it, but it can’t be you. Not in this shape, anyway.”

Poe nods, feeling weather-beaten and far too exhausted to try arguing. He’s a failure, and he knows he’ll wake up in the morning with that as his first regret on a list of many, but that’s for tomorrow. 

For now, he casts one last longing glance out over the desert before Snap pulls him away.

* * *

“I’m Rey.”

She’s dressed differently, and from this angle, he can make out her features so much easier than from his spot in the sand on Jakku. Whatever he’d seen while he was there clearly wasn’t the mirage that Snap had convinced him it was. Whatever it had been, it was real.   


His hand on hers tells him that much.  


“I know.”


End file.
